Last day to vote for next District 1 councilman

Diego Bernal and Ralph Medina are running for the District 1 seat on City Council. EXPRESS-NEWS FILE PHOTOS

In the vernacular of the National Basketball Association, currently playing its championships known as the NBA Finals, there is no double overtime. Today is the last day residents of District 1 can vote on the City Council seat.

In a pool of five candidates entering the May 14 election, these two were the last two standing. Bernal received the most number of votes with 40 percent. Still it was not enough, and now the civil rights lawyer and retired firefighter Medina have been slugging it out for a month leading to today’s runoff.

If any of this is news to you, then you probably haven’t voted. The turnout for the election May 14 was dismal. Even Jacque Callanen, Bexar County Election Administrator, told me then it was one of the lowest in recent years.

Over the last month, my own informal poll of family and friends showed that most didn’t know there was an election, or that City Council seats were up for grabs. Certainly, not everyone’s a news junky, but shouldn’t those election signs that sprout at school and community center lawns be an indicator that some kind of season is near?

If you haven’t already, get out there and participate in one of this country’s greatest processes — which is way cliche, and kind of cheesy against today’s most jaded generation — but it will never not be true, as long as this country’s in business, or until the apocalypse.